Sunday, March 16, 2014

That morning I had turned to Psalm 19 in search of words to express the treasure of the Word of God, words to lift to Him in praise for that precious gift, and words to remind myself of all its benefits to me. These words I found, but verse 14 surprised me, even after untold readings.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.

"Meditation." It says "meditation." Not "thoughts," but "meditation." Sometimes a passage is so familiar that I see what I expected to see instead of what is actually there. Such had apparently been the case here, so that the truth splashed me awake.

Christian meditation makes little of how empty the mind is and much of what fills it. The Hebrew words translated "meditate, meditation" convey the idea of muttering, mumbling, musing, or talking to oneself. The meditation of my heart is the mental rut worn deep by repeated travel, the pattern of thought I steep in my soul until I take on its character as my own. Meditation resembles a child kneading a piece of chewing gum with teeth and tongue until every last flavor particle is extracted. The proper objects of Christian meditation are the truth of God in Scripture (Psalm 1:2, also many places in Psalm 119), the work of God (Psalm 77:12), and the revealed character of God (Psalm 63:6).

The Spirit wielded this sword-word to slash away my habitual mask, so much a part of me that it even accompanies me to my times alone with God. It exposed the thoughts and intentions of my heart and took my breath away as I suddenly realized how much of my meditation concerned the wrong things.

When stress rises, my guard slips and old habits creep back into my thoughts without my noticing. I begin to meditate on the sorrows of loved ones, on recalcitrant tendons that won't respond to treatment as expected, on the relentless pace of medical expenses, on worries about some tricky scheduling decisions over the next two months. I meditate on how I might fix this or that situation, how I might ease this one's burden, how I might reduce tomorrow's anxieties by fretting over them today. (No, that doesn't work very well.) And then the curtain falls on the day and I realize I neglected to work on my memory verses. I had been telling myself I had been running out of time, but the truth is that my heart was too full of meditation on the wrong things.

Thanks be to God for His gentle rebuke and invitation to wear new, better ruts in my heart. All thanks to Him for His Word, for His saving work in even my life, and for His unfailing love.

Change is a slow process, but I will begin this new week with meditation on good things, on God's good gifts to me and mine. Thank You, Father:
for worshiping in community this morning,
for Your songs in my heart's ears more often this week,
for time to sit outside almost daily to listen to the birds and the breeze,
for a spur-of-the-moment drive with my parents to see my sister and her boys,
for laughter at her youngest's portrait of me later in the week,
for more chuckles at the gold star awarded to our recycling cart by the city (really),
for a successful surgery for Amore's father,
for fragrant yellow roses on my table,
for strength to do the grocery shopping myself,
for the surprise blessing of being featured on a reader's site,
and for many opportunities to depend desperately on You.
(2014 gratitude journal #746-760)

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